Beyond the Berlin Republic: Germany's Road to the Polls
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Beyond the Berlin Republic: Germany’s Road to the Polls Article by Reinhard Olschanski July 16, 2021 German federal elections are set to take place in September 2021, at a time when the country’s political landscape is undergoing significant transformations sparked by both internal and external forces. In the first of a two-part series ahead of the elections, Reinhard Olschanski looks at the path German democracy has travelled thus far, how it has selected the contenders for the crucial role of chancellor, and the key challenges that lie ahead for Greens in particular as campaigning intensifies. For all their wildness, the 1960s and 70s appear today as a phase of relative clarity. The world was dominated by the bloc opposition of two superpowers and their camps, and German politics were similarly binary. In West Germany, the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats were the domestic superpowers of parliamentary democracywith a small liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) in between. This arrangement remained in place up until the early 1980s, when the Greens arrived on the scene. But initially, for many, the party was cut from the flesh of social democracy and did not fundamentally alter the binary logic of the blocs. The year 1989, which marked the end of a short 20th century, German reunification in 1990 are even more visible as landmarks. From the Rhenish Republic to the Berlin Republic Reunification took place formally as the accession of the German Democratic Republic not as a sovereign act of refoundation. In the new Länder (regions), this was to have major socio-psychological consequences. For millions of people, the old, if little-loved, world collapsed, raising questions about the meaning of many lives. At the same time, the Second Federal Republic remained equipped with all the trappings of the first. Bonn in the Rhineland remained the capital for the time being. The old chancellor, Helmut Kohl, became the new one. The experience of reunification in the West diminished the awareness that much had changed at all. After all, the US was still a superpower. The global code was now bloc confrontation minus one. Only gradually did people in what was then West Germany start to feel how much had changed. The formation of the red-green government in 1998 marked a turning point towards a new, post-Kohl Zeitgeist. True to the old German motto of doing everything important late and, above all, first in spirit, the republic was culturally reborn. The move of the capital from Bonn to Berlin helped shape the cultural superstructure of a “Berlin Republic”. The increasingly pluralised and liberalised worldviews and ways of life – on the rise since the wild 1960s – were now also at the centre of politics. The victory of Christian Democratic Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2005 did not change this. She governed with the former chancellor’s party, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which was www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu 1 / 6 suffering the consequences of Schröder’s Hartz IV welfare reforms and was now threatened by the combination of East German socialists and its own left-wing splits that went on to form Die Linke. Chancellor Merkel never dreamt of a spiritual and moral return to the past, as Helmut Kohl had when he took office in 1982. She recognised that there was no turning back time. So Germany celebrated the 2006 World Cup as a colourful, multicultural summer fairy tale – a special experience for the soccer-savvy country. Merkel went on to govern for a further 15 years in a pragmatic fashion – in two more, smaller grand coalitions with the SPD, and once, from 2009 to 2013, with the FDP. An ever more plural parliament In 2021, the old tankers of the CDU/CSU and the SPD are now suffering from the ravages of time. While 90 per cent of the electorate once rallied rally behind them, today that number is only slightly above 40 per cent. A colourful party system has emerged. Today, there are no fewer than seven parties in the German Bundestag: the two black sisters, the CDU and the Bavarian CSU, and add the SPD, the FDP, the Greens and Die Linke, as well as the right- wing populist and in parts extreme Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). It is the most politically plural Bundestag since the 1950s. With the pluralisation of the political landscape, the old Left/Right divide has lost much of its salience. Except for the AfD and the Die Linke, all parties swear to belong to the centre. The CDU even claims to be “Die Mitte” [the centre] as such. The days when people could state with precision how far to the right or left they stood are over. Internal pluralisation has been joined by the disorientating effects of globalisation. The experience of “Westlessness” during the Trump era was particularly disturbing for Germany. Until 1945, the struggle against the West and its liberal democratic constitution was a culturally defining motif of German imperialism and Nazism. Overcoming the corresponding ideology with the Westbindung [alignment with the West] of the Federal Republic was a great democratic learning step. Westlessness under Trump dealt a severe blow – together with the rise of China – to the “superpower binarism minus one” order into which Germany had settled. The certainties of geopolitics tied to the United States had temporarily disappeared. For a Federal Republic that saw itself as an economic end in itself, as “Deutschland AG”, whose foreign policy was understood only in the sense of foreign economic policy, the result was the confusing experience of a world that seemed to be fragmenting not only domestically but also globally. The Merkel era That old binary codes were increasingly losing their currency was somewhat disconcerting in many parts of Germany, but not shocking. No one was threatening Germany directly. China remains distant, and is also Germany’s most important trading partner. Above all, there was still “Mutti”, the chancellor who governed calmly and pragmatically through all storms and crises. Unlike Margaret Thatcher, who wiped away questions about the relationship between womanhood and office with a hypermasculine style, Merkel took on the role of an almost genderless mother of the nation. With her unobtrusive presence, she was part of the interior design of the Berlin Republic. The most popular www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu 2 / 6 politician for years, many Germans felt at home with her. Even if the familiar coordinates of political orientation had faded, the chancellor was still there at the centre. Germany may have the unpleasant experience of realising that the old patriarchal thinking is much more deeply rooted than often assumed However, material and cultural anxieties eventually became more palpable. The populist AfD emerged, founded by economics professors who, in the sovereign debt crisis that followed 2008, challenged Germany’s close EU integration with D-Mark-national ideas and rejected any prospect of paying for supposedly lazy and disorganised Southern European countries. With the 2015 refugee crisis, the focus of populist resentment politics shifted. It railed against refugees and migrants, free media, and a supposed Merkel dictatorship. The goal was the polarisation of political culture. Instead of a common debate among political opponents, it was to be about a mutual closure of social groups. In the process, the influence of far-right forces in the AfD also increased, especially in former East Germany, where many neo-Nazi cadres had flocked from the West. In elections, the AfD often wins over 20 per cent of the votes in Eastern regions. The refugee crisis made Merkel more defensive. Especially once her Bavarian sister party CSU copied the populist language of the AfD and mobilised against her. Only a bitter election defeat in Bavaria pushed the CDU to recivilise its political language. Nevertheless, Merkel announced that she would not run for chancellor again. It was thus clear that Merkel, the anchor of stability and identity, would be history from the fall of 2021. That she regained her old approval ratings during the pandemic did not change her mind. Germany would have to ask itself where it stands and where it wants to go. Choosing the candidates The first answer to the candidate question was provided by the Social Democrats, who chose their Vice-Chancellor and Finance Minister Olaf Scholz early on. The beleaguered party has had little luck with its last three candidates. In 2017, the nomination of former European politician Martin Schulz did have a short-term “Schulz effect”, but the boost only lasted a few weeks. Party offices and meetings were filled with comrades who had not been seen for some time and who hoped that the SPD was back and could pick up where it had left off. However, what followed ultimately was a depressing 20.5 per cent vote share. Nevertheless, the SPD found itself in government at the beginning of 2018, after long negotiations by German standards. A Jamaica coalition – named after the party colours black, green, and yellow of the CDU/CSU, the Greens, and the FDP – did not materialise. The Social Democrats did manage a few achievements in their unpopular coalition, for example, with a pension supplement for low earners and support programmes during the Covid-19 crisis. The stigma stemming from Olaf Scholz’s role as architect of the Hartz IV reforms also receded into the background. Nevertheless, the party today polls at around 15 per cent. Unless it makes up ground against the Greens, Scholz’s party could be confronted with the question of how realistic an SPD candidacy for chancellor is in the first place. www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu 3 / 6 The search for a Christian Democrat candidate was more exciting.